fragile

17

She was good at pretending.

At the workplace, she was one person and at home, she was another. Where she was all smiles and affection for the kids which was always genuine, once she stepped foot in her domain, that all vanished.

Gone was the love and the brief happiness that the children brought her. The only thing she could feel at home was...well, nothing.

She was numb.

She did her routine as always but it never brought her any satisfaction. Not as much as it used to. Even reading was a chore for her so she didn't do it.

Mira hadn't touched a book in several years.

A part of her, when she was a foolish teenager, wanted a knight in shining armour to come to save her.

To heal and fix her broken self like all the guys did for the main lead.

But she realised all too soon that real life didn't work like that. It was all about being independent and anything else wasn't tolerated and looked down upon.

Men didn't like weak, broken women. They didn't want any emotional baggage to carry around when they had problems of their own.

She liked that, though. She liked eating what she wanted, watching what she wanted without having to constantly ask or worry about another person.

She liked being alone but she despised being lonely.

Mira stared down at her birthday cake on the dining table. She sighed as she sat down. She had bought a cake for herself on the way back, even though she didn't have anyone to share it with.

There was nothing to be celebrating, really.

There was no happiness.

"Twenty six years old," she breathed out. She chuckled, the sound bitter and rough as if she hadn't talked in years. She was getting older by the minute and she didn't know how to feel.

She had lived...but not in the way she wanted to. And it was yet another year without her mum, only worsening the mood.

Her life had spiralled into a world of chaos because of a small misunderstanding that her fake friend had blown out of proportion. Mira was the one that had to deal with the repercussions of it.

She couldn't even speak to her mum properly who had been going through things of her own and withdrew from sharing.

That was what crushed her — the fact that her poor mum was suffering all by herself while Mira was dealing with petty high school issues.

After her mum passed, things were difficult. However, considering Mira was alone emotionally, she managed to quickly adapt being alone physically.

It was much easier than she had thought, too. But that didn't mean it hurt any less.

The salty tears began trailing down her puffy cheeks, and she leaned forward to blow out the candles.

Wiping at her cheeks, she shovelled forkful after forkful of cake in her mouth to avoid hearing her own sobs.

"Happy birthday to me," she whispered brokenly to herself.

Birthdays weren't really happy, after all.